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| Insane overengineering of a car headlight |
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| tooki:
--- Quote from: andy2000 on February 17, 2022, 03:54:02 pm --- --- Quote from: tooki on February 15, 2022, 10:04:48 am ---Except that you’re just plain… wrong. Look at the actual beam patterns of modern adaptive lights, and they light the edges better. Old headlamps had to limit their wide-pattern brightness to avoid blinding oncoming traffic. Adaptive ones solve that a different way and thus can have a wider throw. --- End quote --- It's true that well designed modern headlights are better, but there are plenty of poorly designed headlights on the road that are worse than basic halogen lights. I've read report a few years ago about just how bad some modern headlights were. Hopefully things have improved since then. I drove a new Dodge rental car about 5 years ago, and I couldn't believe how bad the headlights were. They were HID and had a very sharp cutoff. The problem was the cutoff was too close to the car, and the light directly in front of the car was too bright. I could see absolutely nothing until it entered the illuminated area, and by then it would have been too late to react. It felt very unsafe compared to my own car with halogen lights, or other cars I've driven with well designed HID lights. I ended up swapping for a different car as soon as I could. --- End quote --- Without a doubt. With that said, those are at best modern-ish. Remember that modern headlamps were only legalized in USA on Tuesday. Like 3 days ago. So the things this thread is talking about plain and simply do not exist in USA yet. |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: andy2000 on February 17, 2022, 03:54:02 pm --- --- Quote from: tooki on February 15, 2022, 10:04:48 am ---Except that you’re just plain… wrong. Look at the actual beam patterns of modern adaptive lights, and they light the edges better. Old headlamps had to limit their wide-pattern brightness to avoid blinding oncoming traffic. Adaptive ones solve that a different way and thus can have a wider throw. --- End quote --- It's true that well designed modern headlights are better, but there are plenty of poorly designed headlights on the road that are worse than basic halogen lights. I've read report a few years ago about just how bad some modern headlights were. Hopefully things have improved since then. I drove a new Dodge rental car about 5 years ago, and I couldn't believe how bad the headlights were. They were HID and had a very sharp cutoff. The problem was the cutoff was too close to the car, and the light directly in front of the car was too bright. I could see absolutely nothing until it entered the illuminated area, and by then it would have been too late to react. It felt very unsafe compared to my own car with halogen lights, or other cars I've driven with well designed HID lights. I ended up swapping for a different car as soon as I could. --- End quote --- I'm betting they were not aimed properly. Headlamp aiming is actually fairly critical, especially the ones that have that nice sharp cutoff, the dealer is supposed to set up and aim the lights but I think it's rare that they do. |
| tom66:
Headlight alignment is part of the MOT test in the UK, a legal requirement for cars over 3 years old that is performed every year. I have had a car fail its MOT for lamp alignment - I had installed the dipped halogen bulbs upside-down which completely changed the beam pattern. I wondered why I was flashed now and then on the roads! I blame the criminally stupid Peugeot design but really it was my idiocy as well for not noticing this earlier. It's perhaps for this reason that it's rarer (though it does happen) to be dazzled in the UK by another driver's headlights. Is the same true for the US - I know there are some states that don't even have mandatory inspections. |
| G7PSK:
All the MOT stations I have been to have always adjusted the head lights if required rather than fail the vehicle they have also replaced bulbs for me as well, these often fail when they bump the vehicle ont the brake testers. |
| tom66:
--- Quote from: G7PSK on February 18, 2022, 12:44:27 pm ---All the MOT stations I have been to have always adjusted the head lights if required rather than fail the vehicle they have also replaced bulbs for me as well, these often fail when they bump the vehicle ont the brake testers. --- End quote --- This is actually prohibited under the terms of the MOT - you're not allowed to remove anything once under test. However, many garages get away with this by offering a free "pre-MOT inspection" that occurs 5 minutes before the MOT test! In my case the garage did re-test the vehicle for free after I had fiddled around and refitted the lamps correctly. It seems Peugeot designed the 206 around the air conditioning compressor and then bolted the rest of the car to it, as changing the left-hand lamp was always a right faff. |
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